How Satellite Technology is Protecting Alberta Waters from Harmful Algal Blooms

Algal blooms are not an uncommon occurrence across Alberta’s 600 lakes, but they can ruin a summer day on the water for many.

While not all blooms are harmful, some can be devastating to local ecologies.

Certain blooms, which spread rapidly in the water like weeds, carry toxin-producing organisms such as blue-green cyanobacteria.

These particular algae produce liver and neurotoxins that threaten the health of wildlife, livestock, pets, and in extreme cases even humans.

The water itself is also robbed of vital nutrients, rendering zones inhospitable to many aquatic organisms.

To combat the danger, accurate tracking of blooms is critical.

The province of Alberta has turned toward satellite technology in an effort to manage the logistical challenge.

A strong majority of the region’s lakes “are inaccessible to traditional monitoring programs,” Rolf Vinebrooke, a professor at the University of Alberta’s Department of Biological Sciences, recently informed Alberta Innovates.

“Logistically, you can’t sample an entire lake with a boat every week,” he says.

And yet “blooms happen very rapidly,” Vinebrooke warns.

In a collaborative initiative partially funded by Alberta Innovates, a project leveraging satellite technology is providing sophisticated algal bloom monitoring and forecasting.

In 2023, the Alberta Lake Management Society visited six different lakes multiple times each to collect water samples for comparison with satellite data.

“The boat crews went out at the very same time the satellite was passing over … and sampled lakes for things we would be using satellite data for, like how much chlorophyll is floating around in the water,” Vinebrooke recalls.

From this venture, the team built a predictive model of algal bloom status.

In 2024, the crew repeated the process to validate the model they developed.

Today, the tech can identify the presence of harmful algal blooms in near-real time, allowing governments to manage health advisories and enabling watershed councils to develop effective management strategies.

The next step beyond tracking algal blooms in real-time is to predict them before they happen.

In this vein, the Alberta Environment and Protected Areas has deployed three state-of-the-art floating observatories which collect lake data at 15-minute intervals.

The information collected is being applied to a forecasting model utilizing machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Other partners supporting the project include the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute and Alberta Health Services as well as Associated Environmental Consultants, the Pigeon Lake Watershed Association, Lac La Biche County, and the Wabamun Watershed Management Council.

“Alberta Innovates really helped us bring together and attract partners within the province,” Vinebrook noted.

A forthcoming web-based tool will even allow the public to easily access the data and observe trends for their lake of interest.

The future vision is that Albertans will check for upcoming algal blooms as easy as looking up the weather forecast.